“Any good news to be had?” Peter’s voice broke the silence, causing Ashley to jump, startled by his unexpected appearance. She looked over to the doorway of her cubicle and saw Peter leaning on its sill with his hands, peering inside at the dance of figures and lines across her monitor.
“I could ask you the same question,” she replied.
“You first,” he responded.
“Well, it isn’t very good. Rationing must begin today; we’re clearly out of options. And we’ll have to drop the temperature three more degrees. And, well, I hate to say this, but we’re going to have to lower the oxygen to the 2000 meter level.” She was referring to the relative percentage of oxygen found at equivalent earth conditions at 2000 meters above early standard sea level conditions.
“Colder temperatures, food rationing and lowering the oxygen...” Peter began. “I realize that isolating each one of these from the other may not be so bad, but all together, their impact may be multiplied. Have you considered that?”
Ashley bit her lip. “Yes. Well – no - not really. I’m just adding up all the little beans here. You’re the fearless leader. That’s why we pay you the big bucks.”
Peter simply sighed without expression. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”
s hard as they tried to keep it secure, the secret about Covenant leaked out. Early in the man-hunt, Francis gave up and encouraged the entire colony to join in. As parts of the tale began to leak out, Peter finally called a meeting in the dining hall and told the group everything he knew. Then he made the mandatory apology for keeping secrets. The crowd broke up and began the search in earnest. They searched every room, ventilator shaft, closet, MAT and every centimeter of BC1. They even checked the MAT logs – none of them had been moved since Covenant had disappeared.
The entire manhunt had turned into something of a major entertainment event for the colony. As each corridor and segment of the colony was cleared, it was marked off on a multicolored chart in the dining hall. Ultimately, the entire colony was cleared. The only possible hiding place that remained for Covenant was the Crippen launch complex, which Covenant could have easily reached on foot.
Peter asked Bob Kerry and Suzanne Nikifortune to take a MAT out to the launch complex and check there. They had been working together nearly hand in hand for sols and had obviously developed a well-known professional relationship that had blossomed into something much more. As Peter had looked about for a pair of competent professionals to make the run out to the complex for a look about, they were standing nearby and ready. Everyone else was involved in some other task in the manhunt or on duty.
As the MAT pulled away from the main colony and headed toward the launch complex, the colony search had ended. The colonists then all gathered in the dining hall to watch further progress on the main monitors. It was unfolding like a movie in real time; a drama of life and death, of deep mystery and intrigue flickering on their screens. Unwittingly, Peter had chosen two supremely intriguing characters to carry out the last dramatic moments of the search.
If BC1 had a Most Interesting People magazine, Bob Kerry and Suzanne Nikifortune would have been on the cover. Now they raced across the Martian sands in the gathering desert twilight to corner a desperate man bent on the destruction of them all. Not until it was too late did Peter recognize his mistake. Sending two individuals whose relationship was most accurately defined as “lovers” to trap a desperate killer was the wrong move.
As he watched the MAT recede toward the launch complex on the screen, Peter looked to Brinker and saw it in his eyes. Brinker, in a non-verbal protest from across the room, popped his stogie into his mouth, leaned back against the bulkhead with folded arms and merely shook his head slowly, staring blankly at the monitor. Now it was too late. As Peter considered whether to call them back and reassess, Kerry called in his passage of the final checkpoint on US1 on his way out to the complex. Now Peter would have to watch the events unfold along with everyone else.
The people in the video control center took over the drama’s imagery as they began to expertly control the camera feeding the master monitor in the dining hall. As the MAT drew near to the pad, the cameras panned to keep the approaching vehicle in view as it slowly made its way up the incline to the launch structure. At the top, the MAT came to a stop and the doors opened.
The dining hall became deathly quiet as every eye strained to watch the details and hear any voice transmissions from the couple who had just driven into harms way. Not a word was spoken at the colony or from the pad as Kerry and Suzanne stepped slowly out of the MAT onto the complex surface. The cameras zoomed onto Kerry as his helmeted head scanned the pad. The setting sun glinted off the gold visor into the camera lens in a brilliant, four pointed star reflected off of his slowly rotating helmet. It lent an even more surrealistic illusion to the manhunt than before – adding a dramatic, visual flare to the scene at the complex, enacted before them in real time.
Kerry’s arm motioned to Suzanne with a sweep and she walked carefully in his direction. They came together slowly. When they met, everyone watched as Kerry gripped her arms gently and pulled her slowly toward him until their visors met. It looked for all the world like a kiss though the visors, but most understood that Kerry was communicating his commands by having her read his lips so as not to tip off their presence by a radio transmission. Still, the image of the forced embraced lent to the incredible excitement of the moment and fed the tension that was building second by second.
Peter realized that mistake or not, he had no choice now but to send in the cavalry. He looked toward Brinker who was already staring at him with laser eyes, and simply lifted two fingers into the air then pointed at the monitor. Brinker needed no more instruction as he collared Hiraldo and thrust her out the door of the dining hall ahead of him. Reinforcements were on the way. But radio silence would prevent Kerry and Suzanne from knowing that until they showed up on the pad.
Everyone watched in lip-biting apprehension as Kerry and Suzanne moved slowly toward the door of the only man-rated, pressurized structure at the complex. If Covenant were hiding out, it would have to be in there.
Incredibly, the front door to the complex was open; yet another serious violation of protocol. Kerry had no way of knowing of the previous wild activity at the complex just prior to the last tragic launch. His movements seemed to assume that the opened door indicated to him that Covenant was probably inside. Just as insane as a screen door on a submarine, no one in space exploration ever left doors swinging wide open, ever. An open door could only mean something most unusual was happening or had happened.
The images on the monitors showed Kerry locate two blunt objects, resembling pipe segments, for self defense, and hand one to Suzanne. They moved to both sides of the open door. Covenant could easily kill them just by puncturing a tiny hole in their pressure suits. As the colonists watched the soundless drama unfold, everyone seemed to hold their collective breaths as they inched forward in their seats.
Kerry stood with his back to the open hatch, then quickly and unexpectedly stepped inside ahead of Suzanne, his pipe held in front of him like a sword. Suzanne slowly and deliberately turned her back to the door as she watched the area behind them. Slowly she backed into the open space and disappeared inside, closing the door behind her.
The monitor shifted to a new camera inside the complex itself. It slowly panned and focused on the pair standing inside. Kerry and Suzanne began to methodically investigate every place a man could hide.
Meanwhile, another image appeared on their screen, imposed at the monitor’s bottom right corner. It was the view of Brinker’s MAT heading out to the complex, sending up a trail of dust as he raced at top speed toward Kerry and Suzanne. This image caused a stir of voices, but they quickly subsided as every eye returned to the search inside the complex.
As the pair began to eliminate closets and the single toilet, they worked back around to the airlock from which they had entered. Kerry scribbled a note to Suzanne on h
is wrist pad and she nodded. Slowly she closed the inner door to the airlock as Kerry’s fingers raced over the control panel. They were pressurizing the space.
As the air began to rush into the modular room, the colonists could see pieces of paper and other items begin to blow around in the air currents. With this, the colonists began to relax and murmur among themselves. A pressurized space meant security in their minds and it signified that the search for Covenant had ended without unpleasantness.
They watched as Kerry began to scribble more notes to Suzanne and she nodded again. In a minute more, Kerry began to remove his helmet and Suzanne followed. The moment both helmets were off and securely on a table, Kerry ended the radio silence.
“Complex secure,” he said tersely. As he said this, Suzanne disappeared from the view of the camera. One second later, the picture was lost and the screen went blank.
Every colonist present gasped together. They stood watching the blank monitor, frozen in time. The smaller image of Brinker approaching the complex showed his vehicle slowing as he reached the pad. The console director saw that he had lost the view from inside the complex and reversed the shots, moving the blank picture to the smaller screen and enlarging the image of Brinker’s MAT now stopped just outside the airlock.
The doors popped open the moment the vehicle stopped. It was obvious that Brinker had not even pressurized it for the drive over. He and his Marine leapt out immediately. A voice crackled over the communications circuit, “Video inside lost. Proceed with caution.”
Brinker looked directly into the camera on the pad as it zoomed in on his helmet. He simply nodded and made a cutting motion across his throat, which ended any more radio broadcasts.
The camera panned back again, showing Brinker and Hiraldo at the airlock door, repeating the same stance as Kerry and Suzanne had just minutes before, their backs to either side of the now closed door. Hiraldo attached wires to the control panel and then she made a few hand signals to Brinker, who gently opened the outer hatch to the airlock. The camera views showed him disappear inside slowly, Hiraldo backing him up.
The view switched to a camera in the tiny airlock itself, showing Brinker’s helmeted head slowly peer inside the pressurized room. Then he turned and looked directly at the camera which panned back as far as it could. Still, the airlock was so small, it only showed his face through his helmet visor.
“It looks to me like we got a man down inside,” he said slowly.
“Do you need assistance? Do you need assistance?” the Command Center watch officer asked in a near shout.
“No,” Brinker said, shaking his head slowly, blinking into the camera. The entire colony looked on in a stunned hush.
“Can you assist him?” the watch officer pressed.
“No,” Brinker replied, turning the valves on high, which immediately re-pressurized the inner vestibule to the airlock.
In the half minute it took to pressurize the vestibule, Brinker began to remove his helmet before the view of every colonist. The sound of the in-rushing air drowned out all possibility of communicating, the tension building to unbearable levels in seconds. The silence of the moment was magnified by the sound of the rushing air; the seconds built into a wave of slow moving time that seemed to go on and on.
As soon as it was safe, Brinker took his helmet off with a hiss, then popped a worn stogie into his mouth and looked into the camera.
“From what I can see from this angle, sir, the man don’t need my help. It looks like he’s doing just fine for himself.”
He moved his head slightly so the camera could see inside the inner room. Suzanne’s bare shoulder appeared by the glass, then her smiling face as she draped a black cloth over the window.
“Request permission to light up,” Brinker asked briskly.
“Denied,” the watch officer replied curtly as the colonists exploded into cheers.
t was as if Kerry and Suzanne’s antics had somehow displaced the worry over the lost satellite links and a missing homicidal lunatic. To Peter, their mood was astonishingly upbeat, as though the actions of lovers became the action of heroes. They would live their lives fully regardless of the deadly circumstances that unfolded around them. It was the odd right mix; totally off-beat and nearly bizarre, but it was precisely what everyone needed at exactly the right moment.
That evening after dinner, the rationing and cutbacks were announced. But there was no morose response and absolutely no bickering or complaining. They all knew this was coming and after a few jokes about doubling up on blankets and long johns, a movie re-run was announced and most people hung around to watch it.
Later that evening, when things were back to normal and most had gone off to sleep, Peter and Francis sat alone at the Command Center Watch Officer’s station.
“So now what?” Peter asked. “No views, no weather, no communications off planet and no Covenant. I would ask whether it could get worse, but…”
“Don’t,” Francis immediately replied. “Don’t.”
“How can a dangerous man just disappear on a planet where there’s simply no where to go?” Peter pressed. “And what’s he up to? What the hell is going on here? None of this makes sense any more. At least before I understood it…”
“So many questions, so little time.” Francis mused, his fingers pointlessly dancing over the controls of his satellite weather station, now lying dead and useless before him.
27
yodor Stepanovich Kirov was in a tight spot – wedged unyieldingly beyond anything his claustrophobic mind wanted to accept. He lay partially on his side in a Shturmovoi ventilation duct just above and outside of Colonel Zoya Dimitriov’s quarters. He wanted to scream and thrash about – anything to loosen the shaft’s tightening grip on his body – but he bit his lip to prevent even a quiet moan from escaping. He knew that if he were caught, it would be his last hour of life. There were no trials at Shturmovoi. Kirov knew the only hope he had to avoid detection by those in the room below was to relax. To accomplish this when he wanted nothing more than to escape his thin metal prison was monumentally difficult. But he forced his mind elsewhere – to the life support system that was pumping its foul smell all about his body and down into Dimitriov’s space below.
The first sense of Shturmovoi was, in fact, its odor. It seemed to attack, then dominate the senses as the single most impressionable sensation as one entered her corridors. Unlike BC1 with its pleasant odor of living plants and the primary thrust of its design centered around human habitability, Shturmovoi was compellingly machinelike. As a visitor removed their helmet upon entering the Soviet base, its thick, dank odor settled around them like a cold, acrid fog. The atmospheric interchange units relied on filters, which had to be exchanged with replacements from earth. They were relatively inefficient to begin with, but with the long periods between re-supply, the filters allowed the collective scents of the community to blend into a composite, distinctly disagreeable redolence that permeated and saturated everything. Like the differences in their composite philosophies, BC1 smelled of life and Shturmovoi of machines.
The difference in design philosophy had distinct labels. BC1 relied on living systems for their life support called a bioregenerative system. The Soviets relied on a process called physiochemical.
The debate between the advocates of bioregenerative and physiochemical life support systems had raged on in both countries for nearly a century before the first human set foot on Mars. The physiochemical ilk was made up of the engineering ranks and carried their philosophy into the contest. They espoused their trained beliefs that any life support system could be engineered by brute force alone; the molecules of creation could be arranged and rearranged by machines to support existence. The life scientists believed and designed their arrangements around living systems. They unabashedly taught that living systems were the very products that had held the earth in eons of elastic balance, hence they were much more adept at providing a malleable, accommodating, balanced environment suitabl
e for life than were their mechanical counterparts.
The winners of the debate in both countries were created out of the prevailing social climate. In the RSE, the engineers, who were already revered, won a clear victory. In the United States, a more cultivated discipline won out; a marriage between the engineering and biological sciences had already occurred, and they called it bioengineering.
The bioengineers had proved their worth early in the design game. Long before the systems were actually required for spaceflight, the bioengineering community had become involved in the planning, building systems that could not only do the job, but also provide a pleasant environment besides. They quickly proved the value of capturing and controlling a system using the entire history of life on earth to reinforce it.
Choosing the right path was a critical decision for both countries. Since collecting all the data necessary to design a particular system required a minimum of 20 years of intensive research. The entire facility was designed around the life support requirements. To change designs in mid stream would be virtually impossible. The battle for advanced life support was, in fact, won with the initial decision and choice, and there could be no turning back.
Yet, one only had to sniff the air in the American and Soviet bases to know who had made the right choice. And most ironically, the primary reason the Soviets had chosen the physiochemical process over the biological was because of its "inherit stability". This so-called stability proved to be grossly exaggerated. In fact, once the biological systems had been properly designed, their stability was built into the genetics of the organisms themselves. While the American system operated virtually without intervention, the Soviet's cumbersome, complex machinery was constantly breaking down and required a vast logistics system just to keep it working.
Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium Page 32